


Sinking

by chronicAngel



Series: Leaves in the Summer [28]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Anorexia, Eating Disorders, F/M, Friendship, POV Third Person, Relapsing, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-11-04 13:10:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20738540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronicAngel/pseuds/chronicAngel
Summary: "He left us, Chōji!" She doesn't see it, but based on his sharp inhale, she can picture the way his eyes widen and his breathing pauses for a moment. "He didn't even say goodbye. Didn't he know how much that would hurt?"





	Sinking

He leaves.

Without even giving her a real goodbye, he leaves, on a mission to Suna that she is told may take anywhere from a week to an entire year. She runs to the gates at five in the morning on the day that she knows he is due to leave with Temari, but Izumo and Kotetsu just frown at her with furrowed eyebrows and explain that they left an hour ago. The irrational, over-emotional part of her brain questions, _Was he that desperate to avoid seeing me?_

For the next month, she goes to the gates every day, sitting with her knees pulled to her chest and just waiting for him to show up.

She hasn't skipped a meal in nearly a year, but it's so easy to settle into the routine of not eating breakfast to head to the gates first thing in the morning and just wait for hours. For the first week, she allows Chōji and Asuma-sensei to drag her away for lunch or dinner, though it is almost always only one or the other. On the last day of the week, she eats so quickly to get back to the gates that she makes herself throw up right in front of Izumo and Kotetsu and the two of them finally send her home, telling her to rest so she doesn't make herself sicker. She spends the whole time worrying that this will be the day that Shikamaru gets back and he will find that she wasn't waiting for him.

After that, she doesn't let Chōji or Asuma-sensei drag her away anymore. It is wasted time, and perhaps her stomach is grumbling by the end of every day and perhaps when she gets home she passes out from how much her stomach twists and burns with the desire to eat, but if it means that she will not miss when Shikamaru returns then it is worth the discomfort. After the third day in a row of Ino refusing to go to lunch with Chōji, he hesitates a moment and then sits on the ground next to her, and she stares at him with wide eyes because Chōji has never turned down an opportunity to eat in his life-- she knows because she's been there for all of it.

They settle into a routine, shortly. He will come with an armful of bags of chips, of which she will only eat a handful while he happily munches on the rest, and he will walk her home when the sun has been set for hours and she will let him because the chances of Shikamaru arriving in the middle of the night are rather slim, anyway.

"So," he says around a mouthful of chips, and she doesn't have the energy to make a face this time at his lack of manners. _You're the one from a noble clan, why are you the most socially clueless one on this team? _She grumbles to herself in the back of her head. "Why do we do this every day, anyway?" He asks, and she opens her mouth to answer immediately but he cuts her off. "I mean, I know it's so we can greet Shikamaru when he gets back from his mission and all that, and that's cute and sweet and whatever, but _why_ are we doing that? He's gone on missions without us before and we've never bothered." She doesn't know how to explain that it's because she's maybe-probably in love with their teammate, nor does she particularly want to, so she just stares silently at the horizon for a long time while thinking about what she _can_ say.

Eventually, she settles on, "He's never been on a mission that could take an entire year before, though, Chōji. Imagine if he came home and he thought... he thought that for that entire year we'd just forgotten about him." It leaves a sinking feeling in her stomach, and it doesn't feel wholly like the truth, but it is enough to settle Chōji and stop him from asking questions for the rest of that evening.

A couple of weeks pass and Chōji meets her at the gates every morning. Then, he misses a day. Misses two in a row, then three, and then he doesn't meet her at all anymore, and she furrows her brows and curls up at the gates but does not say anything.

After the first month ends, she stops going to the gates. Shikamaru does not even write to her. It has been an entire month and she hasn't received a single letter from him, a single scroll. _Why does it matter if we've forgotten about him, if he doesn't even pretend that he's thinking about us? Why should I care about him when he doesn't extend the same courtesy?_ She tells herself that's why she stops going, but it doesn't feel quite right. The first morning that she decides not to go to the gates, she runs into her father downstairs, and he seems legitimately surprised to see her. "Oh, is Shikamaru already back from his mission? That's funny, I was just talking to Shikaku earlier this morning and he didn't mention anything..."

"No, he's not back from his mission, Dad," she says, inwardly cringing. "But, y'know, I'm a ninja too and I figured it was time to stop wasting my days waiting around for Shikamaru when I could be training or getting missions of my own from Tsunade-sama. Speaking of which, I should probably go now. Love you, Dad!" Her father just nods after her as she rushes out the door, and she doesn't realize until she's already reached the training grounds that she totally skipped breakfast. _Well, it's too late now_, she decides, and instead focuses all of her attention on training, throwing every kunai and shuriken she has on her person at the training dummy, and once she's out of those, throwing kicks and punches at the wooden figure until her knuckles bleed.

The days continue like this for a long time. She begins to develop callouses on her hands from how often she punches the wood, and subsequently loses more and more body weight until she's all muscle and bones. Occasionally she goes on missions with Asuma-sensei and Chōji, but it's mostly errands. After all, the Hokage has no use for two-thirds of the InoShikaChō trio. They train together even more infrequently-- Asuma-sensei seems to have taken this as an opportunity to see more of Kurenai-sensei, and Chōji has always hated training just as much as Ino did when they were younger, so he doesn't exactly do it when their sensei isn't making him.

Shikamaru has been gone for three months the first time she passes out while training. One second she is throwing a kick and only a little light-headed, and the next she is on the ground. She had forgotten, apparently, how much energy is sapped out of her when she isn't eating. Still, it doesn't mean she starts again. When she wakes up, she launches herself right back into training, punching the wood over and over again until she is panting and her knuckles have split open again despite the rough callouses on them.

She had been eating once every week or so, after training with Chōji and Asuma, but now at least forces herself to have a few bites of the leftovers of whatever her father has for dinner every couple of days, when she plans to do any particularly intense training. It is not really enough to sustain her, but it is enough that she doesn't die, enough that she doesn't pass out whenever she spends more than an hour training, and that is all she needs.

Two more months pass like this. Shikamaru has been gone for six. She ends up in the hospital.

A full day passes before she wakes up. She doesn't even know what she is doing here. She only knows that when she wakes up, Chōji is the only other person in the room, and she stares at him with bleary eyes that are already filled with tears. Her stomach burns. "What were you doing?" He says without even looking up at her from where he stares at his hands, his voice dangerously low.

"I was training," she says weakly, defensive despite how tired and guilty she feels.

"You were starving yourself," he corrects, finally lifting his eyes to glare at her, and she winces. "One second Asuma-sensei and I are preparing to throw kunai at you because you told us, you _swore_ to us, that you could catch them right out of the air, and the next second you're on the ground." She glances down at herself for cuts or scrapes before he says, softer, "We hadn't even thrown them yet, Ino..."

She sniffs and tries to ignore the thousand silent questions he is asking her, tries to ignore the pleading look in his eyes. She has never been very good at ignoring Chōji though, really. Not on purpose. He is too warm, fills the room with his presence too well. Really, he is one of her best friends. Not as close to her as Shikamaru or Sakura, but a constant presence in her life nonetheless. She doesn't know what she'd do without him any more than she does Shikamaru.

She can feel her own tears trailing down her cheeks, hot and wet and entirely too salty, so much so that they make her eyes sting. She squeezes them shut to compensate as she sobs, "He left us, Chōji!" She doesn't see it, but based on his sharp inhale, she can picture the way his eyes widen and his breathing pauses for a moment. "He didn't even say goodbye. Didn't he know how much that would hurt?"

"He never says goodbye before a mission, Ino. He probably doesn't even think about it."

"But this one was different!" She cries, finally prying her eyes open to see Chōji's brows furrowed in concern. They are the two emotional members of their team. Shikamaru always thinks with his head, going through life with an almost lazily logical approach. It's like emotions just take too much energy and so he has opted out of them. Asuma-sensei, on the other hand, is likely a balanced being of logic _and_ emotion, but he's also very private. She has never seen their sensei cry, nor has she ever seen him particularly angry. Chōji is the one who is so violently emotional, and he's the one who's always understood her depressive episodes and her quick temper and her... everything. Shikamaru completes her, balances her, and Chōji guides her, motivates her to be better by being the same and better all at once.

He has his fists clenched at his sides now, and she doesn't know if he is angry with Shikamaru or her but she doesn't know if she wants to. She has seen Chōji truly angry so few times in their lives. He has always been jubilant. Always been happy and kind. She is hot-headed, but he is simply warm. Simply pleasant. He offsets the both of them, Shikamaru and Ino. He brings out the best sides of both of them. It is easy to whisper her true fear to him. "Were we not good enough? Was I... Was _I_ not good enough?"

He stomps closer to her and now she stares up at him with wide eyes even as she knows he would never do anything to hurt her. Would never even upset her on purpose. Still, he grips her shoulders with bruising force and she stares at him in fear because she has no idea what he is going to do.

"Are you stupid?" He murmurs after a moment through gritted teeth. She flinches. "Is that why you've been doing this? You've been starving yourself and training 24/7 because you think that's what Shikamaru would want?"

At this point, she can see tears welling up in Chōji's own eyes, and she can't nod or shake her head or say anything because really, she doesn't _know_ why she's been doing this. It was just so easy to fall back upon. When she did not have Shikamaru to comfort her, she could comfort herself by becoming better. She could always be thinner and stronger and just... _better_. When she just stares at him for a long moment, eventually he squeezes his own eyes shut and lets his tears spill over and pulls her close.

"You idiot..."

**Author's Note:**

> Lyle don't interact.


End file.
